


The Undead Diaries

by BWJournal



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Aliens, Conspiracy, Drama & Romance, F/M, Government Conspiracy, Mythology - Freeform, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BWJournal/pseuds/BWJournal
Summary: A series of excerpts of the life leading to the end and the discovery of the inevitable.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: X-Files Spooky Halloween Fanfic Exchange (2019)





	1. Welcome to the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greekowl87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekowl87/gifts).

> This is my super belated gift to Kelly for the Spooky Fanfic Exchange.  
-.-  
To be honest, I had a way too large of a story beat for this, of many moments and details leading to each chapter, but time escapes me. I think it works well (I think?) as stolen moments of this situation. Many influences you will catch if you are an avid science fiction/TV/Movie person. Hope that I did justice to write something worth your time!

It was balmy and quiet. The darkness of a new moon night and the occasional dry rustle as small insects and reptiles scurried through the mounds of dead leaves.

Careful. Delicate. Almost absent.

Best not be heard.

Better not utter a shaky breath or a whimper that might reveal your presence.

If you want to live, that is.

They’re the only ones that don’t fear noises, as they’re probably not very aware of just how loud their presence is; in grunts, in wet sounds, in teeth that chatter like a secret code calling onto death. It’s their own song. The guttural groans, ghoul cries breaking the chasm of stillness, of a pain that really doesn’t exist.

The undead ravaged our world. It was just not as we imagined it would happen. 

Far from the approximations of literature and imagination, of comic books and tv shows, the tragedy happened without us noticing, evident only when it was too late. When the very thing that gave life became scarce. And so, their sentence upon us came down like a hammer, obliterating every hope, replacing us, and inherently... also finding their demise along the way.

It was a simple mistake in their calculation, one that they couldn’t have known, but should have figured out. Course corrected, even. But so it seems that pride is universal. In their thirst for control, in their desire to replace us, to slave us, to make us a staff of incubators, they overlooked the essence of our very existence.

And so, here we are... in the middle of the forest, as fires light up the skies in the distance. Far away enough that the smell of smoke is just the faintest. Far away enough that the smell of charred flesh isn’t as intense, yet.

This is the tale of how they came after the women. The most powerful beings on Earth.


	2. He. She. Them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A page from Mulder's road.  
Farrs Corner, VA - July 23rd, 2025.

FARRS CORNER, VA

_ JULY, 23RD. 2025 _

One would question why would they stayed put. They’ve been on the road before, dodging places and people. There wasn’t really a home base anymore, per se. Maggie died. Bill Jr. is in Germany. Who knows where Charlie is these days. Since the funeral, and what seemed like the most frigid of the Scully Family gatherings, little was known about him. Little was asked about him. Plenty of disdain, though.

It was no surprise that Bill would blame his younger brother for Maggie’s death. Mulder thought it would have actually been a disappointment if he hadn’t been an asshole about it. But it all worked out well for the man’s rants, including a mix of old and new hits: 

  * “Why do you have to be so useless?” 
  * “When will you grow out of your _experimentation_ phase?” 
  * “No wonder mom died. She couldn’t take even trying to process what you are, whoring yourself out to those aberrations...”

That last one was followed by a punch square on the jaw, and - honestly - if Charlie hadn’t beat him to the literal punch, Mulder would have been the one with the sore fist.

Tara berated both, because how dare they fight, or blame, or well… confirm to her kids that they have a gay uncle with a somewhat _ active _ lifestyle. He chuckled at the sight of what was probably a very interesting flight back to Berlin.

And then there was Scully. Caught in the middle, as always. Sans that often surprising support that Maggie used to bring. 

“I wanted to tell him that I’d love to meet his boyfriend,” she said, all of a sudden, as they drove down the interstate. “I wanted to tell him I always knew.”

“You still can, you know?” Her hand clasped his when he reached over the console.

“I know.” She replied after a few bits, after she bit her lip a couple times, after her eyes darted back and forth as they always do when trying to come to answers that she’s finding hard to accept. “I just wish I had been his champion. Melissa would have.”

“Don’t do this to yourself,” he said, eyes back on the road for a brief time. “_ Would haves _ , _ what ifs _ , and _ probably woulds _ aren’t part of the Dana Scully _ Book of Evidentiary Lifestyle _.”

A snort. At any rate he could still make her laugh.

Pain came and went, but stayed far longer than usual. Betrayal. Heartbreak. Shattering moments of truth as their son slipped away from their grasp once more. Even if he knew he’s alive, even if he trusted his connection with Scully, even when he knew Jackson wasn’t his, even when he found himself shamefully trying to dull the pain by trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t care about it so much because of that very detail. Even then, when he knew that it could be worse, he still found myself asking what he could have done to spare themselves a trauma or two. 

They’d seen him twice in these past years. Three if they counted the time Mulder could have sworn that he was posing as one of the nurses in Lily’s nursery when she was born. There was something about her eyes, he claimed.

He often thought about how many times he’d seen them, how much does he care… And then he understood Scully’s and Maggie’s pain on a level that he didn’t think he would get. 

_ Would haves. Should haves _. Failure.

So, they didn’t run away this time. No sense adding another layer of stress, not with a child in tow. Any scenario seemed like a permutation of those parallel universes they didn’t get to live in. The one where he wouldn’t have left Scully when William was born. Or the one where she wouldn’t have given him away, the one where he would actually been his father, biologically or by actually being there. For him. For her. For himself.

_ What ifs. _

So this second, third, fiftieth shot they have at life… let it happen at leisure. On our terms. They pretty much let them know they could find us anywhere, so what’s the point?

Lily… she’s definitely his. And definitely Scully’s. 

Definitely.

Her favorite word is ‘Why’.

There wouldn’t be a day where she doesn’t look at his paper stacks, or our books, or certain words they forget to police and, yes, the first word out of her mouth is _ why. _

Why is this monkey so big, dad? Why do mommy and you have blue jackets in this picture? Why is there a flying plate in that painting? Why did you clip this? Why is mom screaming on the phone? Why don’t I have grandparents? Why? Why are you on the computer? Why does mom have that mirror to look under the car? Why does mom groan when you use the phone you said you would throw away? Why was that man looking at us in that car? Why did we rush out of the doctors? Why can’t I go to the park? Why are you looking through the window? Why are you whispering? Why do you say can-pi-ra-see? Why did mommy hit you? 

“Dad, why are you sleeping on the couch?” 

Yes, Lily. Why? Why us? Why you? Why? - he thought.

“I chose to sleep on the couch, silly!” She climbed next to Mulder and grabbed his face with both hands.

“You’re lying, daddy.” And he’d be damned, but those blue eyes were probably the best lie detectors outside of the Hoover. Probably better than those too.

“Your dad--does not-- lie.” He said between groans as he tried to peel himself from the leather and the dip in their godforsaken couch.

“He does too!” She giggled poking his ribs and exploding in a full throat shriek when he lifted her over his shoulder and headed up to her room.

“We gotta stop feeding you rocks,” He said and she laughed.

“But they’re tasty!” A smartass retort as he tucked her in. He was going to cherish these moments of complete normalcy, he thought as he turned off the lights in her room, leaving just the fairy lights to cocoon her in subtle warmth.

These moments… When they’re gone, soon.

* * *

“He’s back in the US,” Scully said as he entered their bedroom. “I can see it on some street signs.”

“Dreams, again?” He asked.

“Yes. But he’s not letting me see much. He doesn’t want me to.” She laid on her back, hands wringing over her stomach, eyes fixated on the ceiling beams as tears fell freely down the sides of her face. 

At least they know he’s alive.

“What are we going to do?” She didn’t object when the bed dipped under his weight. Her anger had redirected to other parts of their pain. 

“About?” He said, as he scooted to her, laying on his back and mimicking her own position.

“We can’t hole up in the house forever,” she started, with a sigh, and yes… the idea had certainly been on his mind. They could gather up necessities to get them going for a few years, set up some emergency systems, and definitely some security measures and they’d have their own apocalypse shelter. “You know they’re going to come for me. They’re going to come for Lily. You know they will.”

He found her hand between their bodies and held tight. The last month had been a continuous zig zag between denial and hyperawareness. Of fear and dread. Of seeing their naïveté slap their faces back into the reality that is their lives. 

Lily. 

* * *

“Dr. Scully, you need to calm down,” Nurse Kovacik tried, but there was no turning back on Scully’s anguish. Or his. 

They had been getting ready to go to the lake; Scully had been intent on teaching Lily how to fish. Something about great moments with the Scully men and creating memories outdoors and independence away from Netflix. Mulder had cracked jokes about the last trip to a lake that they made together, and how it ended up with unfortunate results. Now he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth.

They were just unloading the car under the canopy of trees when Lily started her way toward the shore. She stopped in her tracks and looked ahead and declared that everything smelled like roaches. 

“Of course, hun.” Scully said unceremoniously as she dragged the cooler off the back of the SUV. “Nature smells like all the things.”

Lily had looked at Mulder, confusion in her eyes that grew glossy with lethargy. What followed was a vision he’ll try to forget all of his life. Or maybe he won’t, so he can never grow soft in not knowing what the worst dread feels and looks like. Her little body fell limp, collapsing on the dirt as Mulder rushed to catch her before her head hit the ground. Her eyes rolled back and this throaty humm spilled out of her. 

_ Calming down _ wasn’t something that Scully was going to do at the request of a nurse. 

As we sped to the hospital, in the minutes that seemed to stretch as long as the road, Scully kept trying to get her to wake up, to react to their voices.The dispatcher over the phone assured them that they’d be ready upon arrival at the ER. But her breath was shallow, and while the noise had subsided, she was still unconscious. Scully’s voice wavered between frantic, angry and terrified. 

“Please, baby, come back to me,” she pleaded over and over as she hugged her and pinched her, checking her eyes, arms and legs for any bites or even a rash. Nothing. Mulder reached over and felt her neck, in learned fear of what he might find, but no. What he felt was the dewey peach fuzz on her soft skin over her delicate bones. She wasn’t Emily, Mulder kept repeating to himself.

She wasn’t Emily and this was not happening to them.

When they barged into the ER, and the staff took her from them, the floor under Mulder suddenly turned into quicksand. Scully tried to go into the trauma room with the attending residents, but was quickly intercepted by this poor nurse that just didn’t get it.

Scully was not going to calm down. 

After five hours, with requests that they fill out forms and questions about allergies and any previous illnesses, they finally let them be with her. Her pediatrician joined the attending in talking to us. An absence seizure, they claimed. Normal in girls of her age group, something she’d probably outgrow. 

“This wasn’t an absence seizure,” Scully contested. “She went fully unconscious, for at least 30 minutes, she has no history of any other milder event, and by the looks of this EEG and MRI it doesn’t seem to give any credit to this diagnose.”

“Mrs. Mulder--” The attending began.

“That’s Dr. Scully,” she corrected, bitter.

“Dr. Scully… be it as it may, there isn’t evidence of an Atonic Seizure--”

“What are you talking about? This is textbook!” She yelled, frustrated. “Dr. Neda, you can’t agree with this diagnose.”

The petite Iranian woman before them was trying to be polite in not shaming her colleague, but struggling to also explain the causes to what had taken place. More time needed. Maybe more exams. Referring her to a specialist. “The truth, Dana… is that while I don’t agree with this diagnose either, I don’t have an explanation for it that matches her history in my practice.”

“How long until we can take her home?” Mulder asked.

“We need to keep her in observation overnight,” there was no love in the attending doctor’s voice as his phone buzzed. “If you excuse me, I have to get back to the floor. Someone will come back to you to move her to a room upstairs.”

And with that, he left the room. 

“Can’t you take over? You know this isn’t right.” he asked Neda while Scully attempted to regain composure. 

“Unfortunately, they only let me be part of this as a very limited courtesy. I’m not credentialed in this hospital,” she then whispered the words that rang all the alarms. “But I’d say, you’re to be really careful.”

She took a look behind her, and sought their eyes.

“I can’t be your pediatrician anymore.” She continued. “I only came because this might be my last conversation with you.” 

Mulder’s throat tightened with each of the million of scenarios that started to run through his head.

“What happened today isn’t an accident or a coincidence and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more.” By now her hands were shaking and he felt like his heart might find its way out of his chest. “I have to care for my family too. I’m sorry that I was in a way… part of this.”

“What do you mean?” Scully said closing the distance between them, an edge to her voice that felt like she could murder her.

“Stay tonight, never let her out of your sight.” The woman’s eyes had grown red and watery. “Try to not draw any more attention to yourselves. When you get discharged, my advice is that you find someone you really trust. Or treat her yourself. Avoid hospitals as much as you can.”

“What would I be treating her for? What is wrong with her???” Scully asked, urgent.

“I wish I could say, but I don’t have the answer you’ll want.” The woman was more than resigned. “Look in her blood work. Run a new one, in a lab you trust. Check everything. I trust you’ll find the clues.”

And then she turned to Mulder.

“Don’t let Dana out of your sight, either. They’ll want her too.” And with that, she took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered as she walked away.

They didn’t sleep a wink that night… They haven’t slept much since. There were slim chances that they’ll sleep in the future. At least not sleep where they’re not plagued with nightmares and where they don’t wake up soaked in the sweat of fear.

They left the hospital in a rush that following morning. They limited every way that she may get injured or out of their sight. They put a camera in her room. There’d be no trip to the lake in the foreseeable future, as much as he’d like to see if their things are still sprawled dramatically all over the ground… as the testament of the moment things started to pivot.

Scully found ways to do her own tests, to find abnormalities, but… there were limits to what they could look for on their own, without raising flags, without knowing what they were looking for. Part of him was afraid of what they’d find. The other couldn’t allow himself to be fearful.

But… There hadn’t been any other episodes. And that - for a while - that was more than enough.

* * *

“We don’t know that they’ll come.” He said, trying to give some solace, even though he had no proof of it.

“Who are you??” She blurted, frustrated, sitting up, her body tense with pent up anger. “Of all the times that I need you to be paranoid and overbearing. This is it.”

He reached out to her, to tuck her hair behind her ear and for a split second… she flinched. Her eyes met his; this situation has put them on the edge of madness. She took a deep, shaky breath, and her blues turned into a slight, silent apology. He never wanted to see doubt in her… but she’s earned this fear. Not of him, but of life, of seeing everything crumble around them again.

“It’s not going to work out if we’re both out of our minds,” he said as he pulled her to him, burying his face in her fragrant hair. He could feel her loosening up, as she buried her face in his neck, stray tears dropping from her face onto his chest. “This is just the path we chose.”

This is just the path they chose.


	3. Frenemies Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no forgiveness and there is no salvation.

The dull rattle of the smartphone on the night table broke her out of her weak slumber. Mulder had finally fallen asleep with his face up against her waist, the weight of an arm over her hips. When she reached over, the name on the screen made her heart grow heavy in her chest.

_ [Can we talk?] _

She could just ignore it. How was she to know that this wasn’t a trick. She should wake Mulder, and show him how this is precisely what she feared. Messages in the middle of the night, doubts, uncertainty. Lack of complete control over their lives.

[What do you want?] She typed back.

_ [I’m right outside] _

And so it begins, she thought… no point delaying. This was an impossible war.

  
  


* * *

Scully felt an odd sense of deja vu when she spotted the woman standing on their front lawn. Just like that time over twenty years back when they first met. Her slender figure stood with her back to her, a cloud of smoke around her. She knew she was aware of her presence; their screen door had made a screeching noise as she exited onto the porch, but the woman didn’t acknowledge her. 

There had been so many times where she had wished things had been different. Monica would have remained their friend, there wouldn’t have been any betrayal, no doubts; she would still be her confidant, her ally. But instead, they’d lost a person that she’d hoped would understand them the most. 

“There was a part of me that thought we’d never see you again,” Scully said, crossing her arms across her chest. “But, I suppose I should have known better.”

Reyes turned to her, taking another drag and letting the smoke slip past her lips in a demure smile. She nodded. And the second that she took to consider her words felt eternal.

“If there’s anything that I may thank him for is the fact that I’ll never die,” she finally said, but there was no relief to her words, but an utter sadness in her features that Scully remembered to have seen many times. “That’s also the reason why I loathe him.”

Scully didn’t let her guard down for such admittance.

“I’m sure he’ll be wishing to be dead at some point,” Monica said as she took another drag. 

“Why are you here, Monica? Another_ timely warning _?” Scully asked, with a bitterness to her that she’d been harboring since that fateful night at the docks.

* * *

When they learned just how it looked to be part of the other race, they realized that they weren’t in any way emotionally ready for what was to come. A kind that was predicted, the one they’d seen in other circumstances, as enemies, as predators. But not in the faces of dear friends, or people that used to be one of their allies. 

What it meant to have this vaccine... 

When they made their way out of the plant, they ran into the aftermath of what had kept Reyes and Skinner away from the events at the dock. 

They both should have been dead, whether they deserved it or not.

Yet, there they were. Alive.

* * *

The faint rustle of leaves gave him away, and she smiled because things never changed. 

“Mulder, you’ve lost your touch.” Monica said, not turning, not flinching, not putting her hand on her own gun to match up the man that stood behind her aiming straight to her head. That wasn’t why she was there, to spur new animosity, to open old wounds, as much as she knew that what would happen would be painful nonetheless.

But Mulder didn’t lower his aim. She knew that gun would probably have a magnetite filled bullet. And that would do nothing on her. Just like those other bullets did nothing but give her a headache for a few days. Wounds have done nothing. Loss of blood has done nothing. There aren't more headaches. 

With time, her weaknesses became less. Her body kept learning how to overcome as if every attack were just a virus to be conquered, no matter how much the logic didn’t apply.

She just… would never die.

“I’m out of his circle now, Scully.” She continued, trying to connect with the woman before her. “I don’t owe him anything. But, this… thing, of being immortal… it comes with some ‘perks’ that I hadn’t accounted for.”

“Whatever do you mean…” Scully responded, defiant.

_ Perks _ that she didn’t account, that she didn’t want, that she regretted with every part of her that felt foreign and invasive.

There were nights when she sat at her bed willing herself to feel that her body was hers, and not this foreign entity that she didn’t recognize anymore. It was very different to anticipate mortality, to fear pain and death, the end of a life. But she didn’t live in that world. Her body would get damaged, yes. And it would regenerate to an extent. She wondered what would happen if one day she asked anyone to pull her heart from her chest, would she continue to be... 'alive?'

Is she _ alive _ now?

“The reason I exist is very much the same reason why Billy Miles survived,” she began explaining. “Why Knowle Rhorer did… Only that I’m a step above that design.”

“We already knew you are a super-soldier. No need to come for a visit for an outing speech,” Mulder said, with a sarcasm filled tone.

“I don’t think that we-- I ...qualify as one. Certainly, I don’t have supernatural strength, but…” Monica bit her lip, not because her mind betrayed her words but because she wished she didn’t have to continue admitting to a choice of her own making. “I can’t die. I’ve been stripped of that right. Like many others will.”

The reasons for which anyone would take the vaccine were always so diverse and so much the same thing, she thought. There were the ones that were completely selfish, the ones that had no choice, and those… well, those like her that thought could cheat the system and fight from the inside. In some sort of sacrifice that meant that they were to destroy the one thing that kept them fighting against the bigger evil. 

She often thought that she had gotten good at lying to herself… but when Skinner became one of them, that’s when she felt the waters coming to drag them into an unruly tide. 

Was it fear? Surely the man didn’t have a selfish bone in him. And she knew that CSM knew and there wasn’t a chance that he was setting himself up to be a fool. There had to be a bigger point to make him one of them. Manipulation? When there’s no fear of death anymore, threats become quite ineffective, unless what you fear isn’t pain on yourself, but pain that projects from others, pain that you can control or soothe no matter what. 

Pain.

Pain that went beyond blocking its’ existence out of their mind, pain that was riddled with guilt, pain that transformed into a new meaning they didn’t know it could take. Pain that was desperate because it wasn’t physical anymore. And then they’d realize how much in making what many may think was a selfish decision, to become immortal, to decide to not be part of the collective experience… at the same time it gave them a collective awareness that interconnected them. The bond of misery.

“To what purpose? It can’t just be for the sake of _ improving our stocks... _” Mulder wondered, snide.

Depends of the definition of _ Improvement _, she thought. Who’s improvement? Theirs? The World? The universe? Depends who you ask. Spender certainly thought that anyone outside the program was a parasite.

Regardless of whomever claimed to be the leader the next years on Earth, the truth remained: the human race, as they knew it, would be gone.

“Repopulation of the earth. Sentient beings will replace humans. No weaknesses, no autonomy, all for the greater purpose of their goals...” She began to explain. “They’ll be the dominating race.”

“You mean _ you will be... _” Scully muttered.

“Sooner or later, everyone will be.” Monica confirmed.“That’s the plan.”

“Please tell me why must we entertain this outlandish idea?” The bite on Scully’s voice spoke of hate that only comes through betrayal. Through loss. Through disenchantment and broken lives.

“I may have been opaque to you in the past about my truths, Scully. But… when have I lied?” She had at least tried, even when trust was an ephemeral concept at times. “I win nothing and I lose nothing by coming to you.”

“You say that as if there’s no choice,” Mulder said, and yes. There was no choice anymore, she only had one thing left; the only thing that wasn’t dead in her was her conscience. Not yet.

“It’s been set. It’s started.” Monica said, reaching for another cigarette to replace the one that she had just stomped on the floor. As she walked away from them and admired the stars above, she wondered what would be of those dreams where the stars meant illusions of grandeur and prosperous fantasies but never the place from where the biggest nightmares come from. 

“Just like with me, they’ll change the genetic composition of all women, making everyone just enough like them, but not enough to fight them hand in hand.” She looked at Scully. She knew that the woman was doing the math about the implications. Regardless of their decisions, regardless of their willingness to not be part of any resistance… this was a path that could never be abandoned. She turned to Mulder, who had lowered his gun at some point. “Then they’ll go after the men. They are a nuisance to their plans… You’re less needed.”

Monica imagined that at some point, any apocalyptic theories would lose their novelty to them, but when it came to it affecting their own children, despite the fact that it had affected their lives already in one way or another, there was always hope that they would slip through this time around. 

“There can’t be any more human children.” She continued, letting it sink in. “They’ll control everything. We’ll become incubators to their race, sooner than later. Everyone will gradually become one of … us; your friends, your neighbors, people you passed once in the office, you...”

“We can’t let them get to Lily,” Scully declared, stubborn.

It broke Monica’s heart. The one she thought she still had.

“I’m afraid I believe that time has passed,” she said, and with every second that ticked meant she could see that pain that she craved seep into her being. The pain she can’t walk away from. The pain that reminds her that there’s still some humanity to her. But at the expense of Scully’s heartbreak. Of Mulder’s. So is the selfishness of her need to feel human.

“What the fuck are you saying?” Mulder lifted his gun again, this time pressing it firmly against her forehead. _ How fitting _ … she thought. _ Maybe this shot will do the trick, _but it was all but wishful thinking.

“You should know _that_ will do nothing,” she said with some apathy, referring to the gun. “Not yours or mine. I’m neither dead or alive. Life is just a human thing. So is death. An earthly thing.” 

Her words seemed to hit a few places that made them recoil. Scully threw Mulder a stern look that made him stand down. 

“Have the seizures started?” Monica asked and the look on their faces said it all. “I thought as much. I've heard that's one of the signs.” 

"The signs?" Scully asked.

“What’s the point of coming here?” Mulder barked, seeing no point to Monica’s posturing. “To gloat on your knowledge? To feed us more lies and fears? To put us on notice?”

“There’s no grand plan in getting _ you _. It’s so spread by now that there’s no point in hunting down past messiahs.” Monica said taking another drag. “But you’re still a man. One that’s proven to be particularly difficult to their tasks. They won’t want to kill you because you could be a leader of a revolution, but because you’re - like I said - a nuisance. And they’re past the point of allowing diplomacy and tolerance.”

The silence that followed just spoke of impotence. One that she was too familiar with.

“So what do we do?”

Monica looked at the woman, and how her fear was shifting before her.

“Resistance is futile… playing their game is our best - your best - bet.” She said.

“To what purpose? If what you say is true, there’s not walking away from our demise.” Mulder continued to challenge.

“You’re still mortal. To a degree. So is Scully.” Far from romantic notions of stories that she’d heard in the past… the reality was that whatever had protected Scully until now it hadn’t been tested against the powers that now threatened their lives. “But your children… that’s another question.” 

That hit the people before her like a ton of bricks. As much as Monica would like to think that they couldn’t be as naive, that they wouldn’t give themselves that privilege, she also understood that that allowance might be the one thing that kept them sane. To live in the fantasy that they could be normal for a while. But _ normal _ had left the building a while ago. Probably the very day that they met each other. 

“What I offer you is help, so they don’t become their tools,” it was the least she could do. “So you can be one of the last that gets to live a life with some semblance to what a human life should be.” 

If they wanted to cling to the lie for a few minutes more… maybe that could be the last human thing she’d also entertain with them.

“But there’s no saving the world…” Mulder probed.

“What is your world?” Monica bit back, trying to hide her frustration of Mulder’s stubborn ways. “_ That _ out there? Or _ this, _ right here?”

He let out a breath. A tired one, filled with frustration and the weight of a life that had depended on finding meaning when it was threatened to be taken away time and time again.

“I think you know the answer to that,” he said, meeting Scully’s eyes.

“Look, for what is worth…” She said in between drags, a chilly breeze whipping her hair back suddenly. “Your survival may mean that others survive, that others keep the_ human factor _. But leading a revolution is asking for a death sentence much crueler than what you’ve already been given.”

Mulder gripped his gun, now just idly by the side of his body. His chest heaved as if he had just run a marathon, as if the air had just been pushed out by the weight of a future decided for him. With little room to hope for a miracle. With little room to continue avoiding what must have been in his mind once. 

There’s no happy ending.


	4. Executive Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter Skinner's moment in time, in a life that no longer measures its' passage.

He didn’t think he’d miss the bureau. Many a night had gone to planning his retirement, and then he’d realize that he’d probably die in one of those halls of the Hoover.

Until he couldn’t. And that was fine. He’d made that decision.

It was a dumb decision, but one that protected him from ever feeling that he wouldn’t be around to protect them.

If only they understood his motivations.

He was careful about maintaining the charade. If he got injured, he’d take unnecessary days off. He’d feign pain, the flu, food poisoning, even headaches. He’d lose boxing matches at the gym even when he could just pound any man into the ground. Anything that made him seem ordinary. 

Nothing would have prepared him for the first time he felt the effects of the vaccine. That was the last time he felt pain. And… different to all the philosophical conversations that he had with Reyes, and how much he got her point, part of him welcomed the fact that he’d never feel that way again. A fear that he really didn’t miss. His own ghosts were enough.

For the outside world, he’d be just a man. These careful lies were also protection for his cover. His new condition didn’t come with trained physicians to explain what would happen to his bones if he broke them. The unevenness of being both alive and dead and how his biology kept changing. Some scars would disappear, others would never heal. Imperfect, but immortal. And at the supposed service of a new administration that had no clear leader, no clear structure, no user’s manual. He could trust so little people… and he often walked those halls wondering just how many of those bodies were like his. Condemned to existence until someone - or something - decided otherwise.

One thing was clear, this was a borrowed privilege, at best.

He hadn’t seen Arlene in too long. He knew he had to keep away. To never be in her presence. At least not that she was aware. Mostly because he couldn’t lie to her. How could he explain that he couldn’t die? What would it mean to her? He thought it was best to let her be what she was always meant to be. Free of a life that she never asked for.

But he’ll protect her, forever. Even when she’d never know about it. Even when she’d never understand why he just walked up to her one day and called it quits. Even if she hated him now. Even if he’d hurt her, broken her life and that picture of a future that would never be.

He deserved it… because this was the aftermath of his choices. And he was more than enough of a man to know that this is the cross he has to bear. 

This was why he didn’t miss physical pain. He had plenty to go around.

His apartment had become a copycat of what the X-Files office once looked like. Tracking their advancement, what he knew of their experiments, of the communities whose women would start finding out they couldn’t conceive naturally. He’d track the lies they’d put out to justify it. 

It all began with Flint. 

They thought that it was just incompetence. Some corrupt government miscalculation that was poisoning the poor and underrepresented. But instead, it was just a convenient start to it all. No one would look that way other than for platitudes, and there were enough conspiracies already and enough resentment to not pick up on the pattern. Failed experiments would be blamed on the water. Lead, after all, was just that. Lead. 

Right?

All the poisons and random contagions of E.Coli, Listeria, Salmonella, outbreaks of Smallpox, all blamed on animal abuse, or workers abuse or human nature and incompetence. 

If there was something that they had capitalized upon was human nature.

There weren’t enough hours in the day to put a reporter on the screen and rant about these rare occurrences. People didn’t read enough these days. Local papers - if they followed leads that were right on the money - no one was really paying attention. Papers were vintage items, and who was really reading the Des Moines Register? By the time they’d get to it… theories were upended, audiences would be overwhelmed, not see the connections, focus in the next blatant - and sometimes engineered - political scandal. The next trial. The next war threat. The next exodus. 

No extensive Rachel Maddow monologue could keep track of the dimensions of this conspiracy.

Then people would conveniently disappear, or get fired, or convinced that even they were going too far with their crackpot theories. They’d be convinced that it wasn’t time for division when the country needed unity in a convoluted government, in a world where WW3 was just around the corner. Never mind the fact that a whole side of the country had been fed the argument that the press was the enemy a few years back. A manipulation effective enough for its purpose back then, that carried on with its dangerous consequences since.

Then the lack of new births would be put to voluntary choice. Millennials and Gen-Z not wanting to burden themselves with debt had begun this tendency; waiting too long to start trying to have a family. The news, troll farms and generational resentment would have played its necessary part, as well. The distance between expectations and needs growing further apart every day.

They’d peg some other signs of the plot to the  _ anti-feminist agenda _ . A never heard of man from some government agency or office tracking women’s menstrual cycles would be justified to anti-abortion efforts, or ICE control of pregnant unaccompanied minors, tied to ultra conservative methods, anti Planned Parenthood tendencies, anti Roe vs. Wade... But never, ever, anyone would actually look toward the actual reason these isolated scandals weren’t really born out of human agendas. Humans just facilitated the setting. Facilitated the execution. Betrayed their kind out of a myriad of reasons all too human themselves.

Not even when thousands of kids were separated from their parents at the US border, most of them unceremoniously taken from shelters in the middle of the night to guardians that were already part of the program, not even then people asked  _ why _ . People thought that the President’s policies were just that, policies, that would go away once a tenure would end. But then a second term happened, and constitutional amendments, and even when there was outrage, and some reversion, the damage was deep enough. The system had been infected with their agenda. 

Mengele was just a broad stroke of madness compared, but it begged the question as to how long this plan had just bid its time, in trial and error, in the depths of genocide and hidden lives in the middle of the Amazon. 

This was the new life of Walter Skinner; a swift turn from a man that had wavered between the front lines and purported safety, and the man that he was today: perhaps the convenient fool in a larger plan that he hoped to destroy one way or another. 

For their sake. For the people that he felt he had failed to protect. For the people that gave purpose to his otherwise lifeless state. 

Being undead was worse than being alive in torture or die in the worst of deaths. There wasn't an end to anything. They’d become willing slaves in no time, in the blatant ignorance of choices made for them. Fighting back would involve awareness of everything; of the betrayal, of the lies, of the incredible deceit. It would mean that everyone would have to learn how they didn’t own their bodies anymore, how life as they knew just didn’t exist and would never exist anymore.

_The uprise would happen_, he thought, hopefully. But would it be of any use? People would react out of shock, hatred, frustration. Mistrust those that would still want to fight with them from within, turn on anyone that wasn’t suffering as much. People would take advantage and abuse. People would be… people. Because that’s the one thing that regardless of how much they’d change their biology, their minds would remain the same. 

There was no changing to that.

Tomorrow is another day... even if that means nothing. 

The uprise will happen. Even if it's a death sentence to most.

The uprise will happen. And he'll be ready change the path that the past dictated for him.

The uprise will happen.


	5. The Punk Rock Ballad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackson Van de Kamp presents...

When he wished for freedom, he didn’t think it would be this oppressive.

In reality, his idea of freedom was nowhere near the reality of it all. 

_ I’ll allow myself one last look, _ he’d lied to himself that morning in the hospital, surprised at the vice he could feel around his heart. As if someone had closed an iron fist around it. Full of life and light. And fire. 

_ Get a grip of yourself, Jackson, _he muttered.

It began on his index finger, white heat crawling up his arm, filling him with a warmth he didn’t remember feeling before. The fierce hold of those delicate, slim, perfect little strong fingers, and pink and cute miniature nails, with a strength that surprised him. The serene look on her face grounded him despite being in a nursery that was exploding with crying infants; she was just there, the picture of serenity. He berated himself for allowing a smile to creep up on him. 

_ Lily Charlotte Mulder. _

His sister... Even if they didn’t share a name. 

In one way or another. She was also part of him. 

And… she was going to need that temperament for what was to come.

He hated that this would probably be the closest skin-to-skin interaction he’d ever have with her. Just another thing to add to the list of items life didn’t allow him to have.

It had been a wild ride to understand the months before her birth. He’d shared so many fears and pain, so many new and indescribable sensations that Dana Scully allowed herself to experience. Elation. Hopefulness. Random, unjustifiable mirth. Learning just how much it was present in Scully’s mind that this time everything was different. And at the same time, just as heartbreaking. 

_ I wish you were here. I know you’re alive. _ She’d think, like a mantra. He knew she was making sure that he’d listen to her. He also wished so. But for so many reasons it was just better that most people thought he was dead. Probably as he should have been all along. 

He needed to be careful; he knew that _ he _ was still alive. Just in a way that wasn’t all that describable. 

Unlike his visions before the events at the dock, when he sensed him next, he couldn’t understand what it all meant. Disjointed, hard to grasp, lacking sense. It had only become marginally clearer with the years. His _ father _wasn’t a man anymore. But he wasn’t dead either. He wasn’t powerless. He was still able to dictate and sabotage their lives. 

Trying to understand what he’d become helped him realize what would be their biggest threat. Their future. Their demise.

Those passing years also brought him to moments filled with anxiety, where an inherent question would always surface. If he was a _ creation _ for their purpose, what about Lily? Why did she come to be? Was she another manipulation? He couldn’t fathom see her live the life he had to endure.

It was only on those brief moments that he allowed himself to be near them that he would get persuaded that his fears were unfounded. Maybe miracles did exist. 

There was so much love. 

So much it was unbearable. 

It filled him with pain… Because he was never on the receiving end of such love, or at least that he can remember anyways. It was always remediary, after the fact, as a random thought and because of a connection with a woman full of guilt. Of a father that sought him like a trophy. And replacements that never felt real. 

And then there was Mulder. 

Witnessing Lily’s childhood from close and afar was never easy, but it remedied the longing that he started to develop as he allowed himself to listen to Scully. To hear about him - Mulder - the man that was meant to be his father. Through her memories, through his actions seen through her eyes… and those rare occasions that he would be secretly watching. Live, uninterrupted. But never part of it.

He didn’t feel one ounce of guilt about his voyeurism; it kept him sane. But he had to do some compartmentalizing when it came to processing all that he could access. 

As time progressed, so did his powers. Eventually, it wasn’t so much about ability, but consent. About how much he policed himself about digging into secrets that he wasn’t sure he would ever be privy to even if he asked. 

When everything started to fall apart, he was almost thankful he lacked self control, of his own darkness… Because it was easier to predict what they would and wouldn’t do. 

It was also easier to protect them. It was also easier to know when he’d been sloppy and they were onto him. 

He hated caring, because deep down he struggled with the fact that they had once walked away from him. But then there were those moments where he listened to their regrets, when he started to see all sides. Where his own road brought him closer, inch by inch, to a sense of forgiveness he didn’t think he’d need or would want. 

Sometimes he thought of giving in. Of walking up to their porch on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Or showed up when they went on the run, and packed everything they could fit in their SUV to escape the upcoming hell. 

As if there was any escape to it.

Letting them know that he was around them would have certainly made everything much easier. He had to be there. Behind them to watch their back, ahead of them to clear the way. But he wasn’t ready to put down those walls.

Still too much that needed resolution.

The fact that Monica Reyes was tagging along was just baffling to him at times. He didn’t have such connection to her to be able to get her motivations, but he learned to see that contrition that seeped out of her. And how Scully softened her grudge, gradually opening up to replace her own longing feelings, and once again giving room to this woman in her life. Complicated beings that they are.

He often thought about the method that the universe had to even out things. 

Back when he’d wanted to manipulate his girlfriends, as if they were his play things, he just saw them as that… dumb girls, with naive conceptions of life and rosey expectations of their future… with him.

But there won't be any future with him. There couldn’t be. 

He started to feel a greater level of shame about his own views of women around the same time that Lily came in the picture. It wasn’t immediate, but it chipped away at every single conception he had of anything related to the fairer sex. 

_ The fairer sex. _

With every day that passed in their close or distant company, he’d come to the crashing realization that - as much as the many books he had read had told him that he needed to deceive and calculate how to pick up women, how to persuade them, how to break their resolve... there was much more evidence on how much those concepts were just a pile of bullshit.

Yeah, you could fool a woman. Definitely. Did they deserve it? Were they all good people? All soft and full of nurturing nature? Were they defenseless? Were they just a target?

No.

He realized in witnessing the day to day of these women, just how much more resilient they were, how their resilience was a defiance, how their weaknesses weren’t such but wounds that they exercised in opening and closing over and over again to build a thicker skin. 

He found that strength in tears that weren’t lack of bravery, or mood swings that had a method to the madness. 

So, instead of continuing to try to cheat his way into their psyche, he realized it was much better to try to break the code to learn from them without malice. Without wanting to abuse it for the sake of getting his way. To learn what made them so special and so different, and why couldn’t men be more like them? Where had they gone wrong in the millennia that the world had been around that the differences were so crass and damaging?

He tried, he _ really _ tried to not be simplistic about his own. He knew that the fact that he was a piece of shit didn’t mean that the rest of the men were. But they certainly had a running tally. Way too long of a tally. It occurred to him that he could also put his own tendencies to the facts that provoked his resentments. But what came first? His feelings of abandonment and every action he had taken since because of those, or the actions he had taken in the guise of utilizing his abilities in whatever way he saw fit, just because he could? Without any kind of ownership to his judgment… as some sort of revenge?

In his ruminations, he didn’t fall for the trope that most women are good. He knew very well that wasn’t the case. He knew that both sides of the coin had the capacity to embrace good and bad. But in the myriad of permutations of men and women, and every space in between those titles, it occurred to him that it was very logical that females gave life, and not males.

Then again, he hadn’t heard of evil sea horses.

At any rate, if it were up to men to give life, and each being born absorbed the traits of their host, how much good would come out of it? When half the time he found himself lacking that one thing that would trigger empathy, or patience, or understanding. It was rare that you heard that women were calling onto wars and revenge that was unmotivated. Revenge that plowed through millions of innocent lives. To follow paths that only led to destruction and subjugation. The only reason there was still a human race was the fact that at some point someone had realized this, he thought. 

And that was the reason why this new plan was so dangerous. 

Much could be said about women making decisions over their bodies and the kind of mothers they could be. He read somewhere once there were a few women that were serial killers. And some very corrupt self starters or enablers. A premise is not a guarantee. Humans are after all, humans… hormones, ethics, morals, upbringing, and identity weren’t always failsafes. It would be unfair to be that basic. 

But another much different notion is when that sort of magic element that women brought, that mystery of creation, was intervened by those that could never understand it past their base level ambitions. Those whose in the ignorance of this alchemy thought they could -and would - play god to a new race. One that would serve only them.

Men weren’t there, yet. They would never be creators in that extent. And he had problems trying to wrap his head around the possibility that they could ever be. 

Love, kindness, nurturehood, that was all good. We could all develop those traits or embrace new realities where in one way or another we cheated the system of creation in a permutation of the original way. However, biologically speaking, no one could ever replace the original, even when the original process was flawed. It was those imperfections that made it… well, perfect. 

There would always be something about being born.

But that notion that they couldn’t recreate the humanity of it all didn’t stop _ many _ from trying. And that didn’t stop others from taking advantage. Of those imperfections, and that mad plan, he was living proof. How else could anyone explain just how he had no place in this realm? Even when he had been nurtured in and by women that tried to love him, his genesis-- he wasn’t meant to be. He’s living proof of his theory. 

He can’t connect. Not like others.

He’s broken. He was never whole to begin with.

The load just kept building. It made him make mistakes, uneven, it felt like a torture that came with self-realization. 

He thought so much about this. On the road. In the middle of the night. While eating. When he found the random girl in a bar that he’d fuck and try to not overanalyze.

Then he couldn’t even do that. He found no meaning in these fleeting encounters and it was all his fault. He’d made himself give a bigger significance to each and every moment. 

He hated it.

He thought that so long he’d keep it as an “academic” pondering, it wouldn’t affect him. But as always, he was wrong. 

He’d been compromised with letting himself fall for the objects of his observation… and then it came the night where he blew his cover in the most idiotic of ways.

He might have looked like a meek man in his 60’s to the people in that mall; just minding his business, sipping coffee, but she was smarter than he’d calculated.

“It was a nice touch to add all that whipped cream to our pies back when we stopped at the diner in Tulsa,” Monica said suddenly to him. “Don’t react. I won’t blow your cover. I know you’ve been around us since we left West Virginia.”

“Dear miss, I don’t know what you mean,” he feigned, serving her with a smile as he started to walk away to one of the kiosks nearby. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Sure. Look, I don’t blame you if you want to protect them,” Monica replied nonchalant as she busied herself browsing through the stash of 2028 calendars on sale. “This is probably smart, the element of surprise and a side muscle to look for our blind spots isn’t a bad deal.”

He looked at her, trying to figure out what to do next. Was this the time to lose the mask? How did she know it was him?

“Stick around,” Monica said, putting back the calendar she was browsing. “They miss you, even if they haven’t gotten to know you.”

“They like the _ idea _ of me,” He responded giving up on the charade.

“That’s the thing about ideas, they can be anything.” She pondered to him, and he saw in her expression that there was some empathy behind her eyes. Even as one of them, that still remained. That empathy that he so much wished came naturally to him.

The vaccine they’ve been given gradually killed the humanity within, or so they claimed. Monica Reyes was clinging to it. Perhaps, just like the others, she was just missing other parts of herself. 

He lost those as he grew up. Burned by the fire of traumatic dreams that he knew would become realities, of knowing he could do nothing to stop them. Under their eye. 

“So, what is it going to be, _ old man _?” She asked.

Jackson looked at them in the distance, Mulder and Scully laughed and goaded Lily while she ate a soft pretzel, cheeks covered in cinnamon, the brownish sugar blending with the freckles that peppered her face. She looked more like their mother with every day that passed. But she was tall… like him. Like Mulder. At nine years old she was almost the same height of Scully and so smart. So much it worried him. That she would grow restless, rebel, not being able to conform… just like him.

It would be so easy to fall for the idea of joining them. But what would be of his own objectives? He had abandoned his own road and his findings for the enjoyment of this family peep show. To worry when things changed around Lily. Because of Lily. Things continued to shift.

But even so, even when in the background the powers that be continued with their dark agendas, everything around them was still somewhat _ normal _. To the point that at the moment, people were crowding the halls of this lush mall in search of early X-Mas presents. 

Oblivious. Many of them praying that the tensions that were brewing around them would dissolve, not knowing that what was brewing was a collective death sentence.

_ Decisions _...

If he stayed… he would be another body, another source of information, but also another source of distraction when all they needed was to protect Scully and Lily. 

If he left… then he could continue trying to find out truths that he could do nothing about, he could continue being a satellite to them, communicating in some way with Scully, hoping she could decipher his messages and predictions.

In the measure of all things possible, neither were particularly useful. Maybe just marginally… it was just the effects of the months witnessing the life he never got to live that convinced him that there was still time to be selfish in a different way.

The one that allowed him to live the fantasy for a little while. 

It was so tempting.

_ “Why did you come to be, little one?” _ Their mother had asked once, quite a few years back, just before dawn, as she had guarded her blissful sleep, a dreamy smile on an infant’s lips, drunk on milk. “ _ Why did you come to me?” _

It had been her, but also… it had been him.

When he learned of _ their _ plan, he reflected about how ironic it was that for the longest time he was chased down for being special and now… well now, it didn’t quite matter anymore. It only mattered for those that cared about the past. Those that clung to the notion that there was a 1% chance in a blue moon… that humanity wasn’t a goner. And even so, he really thought that it was more about the novelty that never meant much to the ones in charge now. The _ old school _ of it all, his special-ness… it just lost importance.

Because, for the new landlords, it didn’t matter that anyone had a particular oddness. It didn’t stand on their way. The fact that he had powers, that he could see into the future, that he had just enough differences to him that he could find leverage when he could find himself in the right position… now… when they were becoming slaves, did it really matter? He couldn’t stop it. No one could. They were doomed.

It was too late.

It was just a gift… when he was there to witness Lily’s own discovery, and the answer to many of their questions.

He was just that getting to it was soul shattering. 

Her tantrums came out of the blue. Scully said hormones. Mulder had said it was the actual Scully gene. Monica stood by the sidelines, coming to Lily when she had no one to talk to, overwhelmed by the storm brewing within.

Weeks and weeks went by, and fears started to grow. Scully would sit late at night interrogating Monica about her own experience under the effects of the vaccine, when she wasn’t even sure that in reality this is what it was. Lily starting to show the effects of it. But Minica had no answers; if there was a way to establish a pattern to what they were looking for, by joining them, she had effectively taken herself out of the equation of being an inside source.

It never occurred to them that it wasn’t so much about what others could have done to Lily… but more about what Lily had been all along.

… And what she would go on to become.

It was brewing. Bubbling inside her.

It was freezing the day it happened; January 17th, 2028. Twitter said that it was a government cover-up that an EMP had gone off in the middle of Denver one afternoon, rendering most of the city pretty useless. No one could find an answer, and the news networks could only report of officials explaining that it would take time to find out the cause, and bring the city back to some semblance of normalcy. 

But the government had nothing to do with it, at least not in the way that they thought. Definitely not as the cause.

Lily had _ come of age… _ in the middle of a tantrum.

Suddenly, he didn’t feel so alone.

Even in the middle of their terror filled surprised, he saw the smile creep on Mulder’s face… and then the gasp when in his own surprise… he’d blown his cover completely. Or Lily had done it for him as they stood outside their motel room trying to make sense of what had happened.

“Oh my god,” Scully whispered when she spotted him.

“Son…” Mulder said, coming to him.

“Jackson--” Scully came to him, too - stopping herself from hugging him until she met his eyes.

He didn’t think he needed it. He didn’t think it would feel like this… but the all too familiar sensation overpowering his system meant confirmation. It was the same he’d felt that day in the nursery. The quickening of his pulse, the warmth and the lack of air in his lungs. He let himself melt into her arms, tired of fighting his stubbornness and resentment. 

Maybe all emotions are indeed driven by electricity.


End file.
